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Frank Moss (d. by August 6, 1884)

Frank Moss was a member of the Convention of 1867–1868, the Senate of Virginia (1869–1871), and the House
of Delegates (1874–1875). Records of his early life do not exist, but he likely was
born in Buckingham County
sometime in the mid-1820s. Local tradition holds that he was born into a free family but evidence
also exists that he was enslaved. In
1867, he won
election as a delegate to the constitutional convention required in order
for Virginia to gain admittance into the United States after the American Civil War (1861–1865).
Described by an American general as "energetic and enterprising," he supported
radical reformers on all major issues. His speeches, however, were considered so
divisive that the Freedman's
Bureau ordered him arrested. A charge of breaching the peace was later
dropped. A Republican, Moss served in the Senate of Virginia and voted to ratify the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the
U.S. Constitution and later
was elected to the House of Delegates. Just after the election, in November 1873, he
was arrested and tried for beating a man who voted against him, but the jury
deadlocked. A national, pro-Republican newspaper denounced Moss as a laughingstock in
1875 and he lost reelection. In his later years, Moss supported the biracial Readjuster Party, although by
1883 he opposed its leader, Senator William Mahone. The circumstances of Moss's death are unknown. MORE...

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Early Years

Moss was born probably in Buckingham County
where local tradition is that he was a member of the free African American Moss
family. The destruction in 1869 of virtually all the county's records makes it
impossible to trace his early life. The names of his parents are not known, nor
are the dates of his birth and death. The census enumerator in 1870 recorded
Moss's age as forty-five, and the enumerator in 1880 recorded his age as
fifty-seven, indicating that he was born sometime in the mid-1820s. Moss's name
does not appear in pre-1870 census returns or in the land or personal property tax
lists of Buckingham County before the end of slavery. That suggests but does not
prove that he was born enslaved. John M. Schofield, the army general in control of Virginia as commander
of the First Military
District, recorded late in 1867 or early in 1868 that Moss had been born
into slavery. An early 1869 notation in the records of the Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (better known as the Freedmen's Bureau) identified
him as a freedman, while an 1874 newspaper paraphrase of a speech Moss made
indicated that he stated that he had been enslaved.

Moss and his wife Amanda (birth name unrecorded) had at least four sons and one
daughter. Contemporary newspaper descriptions of him suggest that he had a very
dark complexion, and several unfriendly newspaper reports in the 1870s compared
him to an elephant or hippopotamus, which may indicate that he was of large
stature or obese. Moss was almost certainly literate by the time he entered
politics. Insofar as is verifiable, he owned no real estate before February 4,
1871, when he purchased 25 acres of land for $55. Four years later Moss purchased
125 acres of land in the same part of the county for $450. He sold the 25-acre
tract for $75 in 1877.

Political Career

On October 22, 1867, when African Americans voted for the first time in Virginia,
Moss won election to represent Buckingham County in the convention that met in
Richmond from December 3,
1867, to April 17, 1868, to write a new state constitution. He received 1,535
votes, all from African American men, against a field of other candidates who
together received a total of 1,097 votes, almost all from white men. Moss failed
to take his certificate of election with him when he went to Richmond, but the
delegates seated him on the authority of the tabulation that General Schofield had
compiled officially reporting the results of the election.

One of two dozen African American delegates,
Moss was appointed to the relatively unimportant Committee on Limitations and
Guarantees. He voted with the radical reformers on every major issue. Schofield
described him as "energetic and enterprising." On January 28, 1868, in Moss's only
extended remarks, he opposed a proposal to exempt land from taxation, which some
delegates, probably themselves landowners, stated would enable owners of land to
hire more workers. Moss described himself as "a working man" and a representative
of "the whole class of colored people in this State" and praised land ownership as
a boon to freed people. He concluded, "When we get the land, notwithstanding the
burthens of taxation may be upon it, we would—or at least I would—rather pay a
high tax upon land and work it myself than to work for other people for nothing."
A hostile local white man not long thereafter dubbed him
"Francis-Forty-Acre-and-a-Mule Moss."

Early in September 1868 Freedmen's Bureau officers ordered Moss arrested on a
charge of "using in public speeches, language calculated to produce breach of the
Peace, and also cause alienation and discord between White and Colored Citizens of
Buckingham Co." They evidently allowed him to remain at large, and early in
January dropped the charge as false.

When voters ratified the new state
constitution on July 6, 1869, Moss won election to the Senate of Virginia from the
district consisting of the counties of Appomattox and Buckingham. He narrowly
defeated white Conservative Party candidate George J. Hundley by 25 votes out of
4,279 cast. Moss was not appointed to any of the senate's standing committees. In
the short October 1869 session of the assembly he voted with the majority to
ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution as Congress
required before it seated senators and representatives elected from the state.
During the remaining three sessions, which concluded at the end of March 1871, the
assembly made major revisions to the state's laws to bring them into conformity
with the new constitution. Among the most important of them was the 1870 law that
created the state's first (racially segregated) public school system for all
children. After voting twice to strike racial segregation from the bill, he and
two other African American senators did not vote on the final passage of the bill.
Among the most controversial laws was the Funding Act of 1871, which provided for
paying the prewar public
debt. Along with most other African Americans in the assembly, Moss voted
for it.

Moss was active in radical politics and was a delegate to the Republican Party
state conventions in November 1869, when he served on the resolutions committee,
and in September 1870. The new constitution set senators' terms of office at four
years but provided that half the senators elected in 1869 serve two-year terms in
order that thereafter half the senators be elected every second year. Moss had to
run for reelection in 1871. He lost to Hundley 2,673 to 2,351 in the reconfigured
district that included Appomattox, Buckingham, and Fluvanna counties. One reason may have been
Moss's advocacy of racially integrated public schools.

In May 1872 Moss was elected to a one-year term on Buckingham's board of
supervisors. In July he delivered the fourth of July oration at a well-attended
barbecue near the courthouse, and several reports of his participation in local
politics appeared in newspapers published in distant cities. He became a member of
the Republican Party state central committee in the spring of 1873 and attended
the state convention that July. He was one of several prominent Republicans who
refused to support the party's nominee for governor. That and Moss's general behavior
had earned him a reputation for independence and divisiveness. Hostile white
politicians and journalists repeatedly asserted that he advocated interracial
marriage. A local white observer nevertheless reported that Moss deserved "more
credit than all the white Radicals, because he has stuck to his color with
indomitable pluck, and he carries the whole set his own way, and makes them vote
for him to a man."

That autumn Moss campaigned as a radical Republican and in November 1873, by a
margin of 1,239 to 1,195, won election to the House of Delegates for a two-year
term representing Buckingham County. A week after the election the county grand
jury indicted Moss and two other men for assaulting a black man who had reportedly
voted against him. One newspaper account stated that Moss beat the man severely.
Released on $100 bail, Moss was tried in December, but the jury could not reach a
verdict, and the commonwealth's attorney dropped the charges in January when Moss
was serving in the General Assembly.

In the 1874 session Moss was appointed to a
low-ranking seat on the Committee on Labor and Poor and to the lowest-ranking seat
on the Committee on Manufactures and Mechanic Arts. The Richmond
Daily Whig reported that when Moss was speaking about the public debt
during debate on March 18, Harrison H. Riddleberger, later a member of the U.S. Senate, asked Moss
to yield that he might introduce a resolution. Moss reportedly yielded, and
Riddleberger moved that Moss be expelled "as a nuisance." The paper reported that
the motion received two votes, but a variant of the report published in the Alexandria Gazette on the same day stated that it received
four votes. The official published journal does not record Riddleberger's making
any motion at all relating to Moss.

In April 1875 Moss and twenty-one other men signed a call for a convention of
African American men to organize a statewide effort on behalf of African Americans
independent of white Republican leaders. By then the Republicans of Buckingham
County were severely divided, and in the election for commonwealth's attorney that
spring Moss spoke out against the Republican incumbent who had prosecuted him for
assault in the winter of 1873–1874. The National
Republican, a Washington, D.C., newspaper that regularly reported on Virginia
politics, denounced Moss in June 1875 as an offensive laughingstock. That November
he lost his seat in the House of Delegates in a three-person race, receiving 706
votes out of 2,389 cast.

Later Years

In the spring of 1873 Moss obtained a license
to sell alcohol in the county and on September 10, 1878, a license to perform
marriages. He remained active in local Republican Party affairs but evidently did
not again run for office. By August 1880 Moss was supporting the biracial
Readjuster coalition that proposed to reduce payments on the pre–Civil War public
debt in order to increase appropriations for the public
schools. His support of the Readjusters provided evidence to their
opponents of how dangerous the Readjusters were.

Moss was still a divisive political leader, and for decades after his death white
Virginians publicly demonized Moss and other outspoken African American
politicians to validate white
supremacy at the ballot box. In November 1883 he was secretary of a
meeting of Buckingham County Republicans who opposed William Mahone, the
Readjuster leader who was then serving as a Republican member of the U.S. Senate. A local white man
in a speech in Staunton on August
6, 1884, stated that Frank Moss had died since speaking at an earlier meeting in
Buckingham, but public records do not contain the date or circumstances of Moss's
death. He was most likely buried in a grave now unmarked on land his descendants
owned near Jerusalem Baptist Church in Buckingham County.

Time Line

October 22, 1867
- Frank Moss is elected to represent Buckingham County at the state constitutional convention.

December 3, 1867–April 17, 1868
- Frank Moss, representing Buckingham County, serves on the Committee on Limitations and Guarantees at the state constitutional convention.

January 28, 1868
- Frank Moss speaks at the constitutional convention opposing a proposal to exempt land from taxation.

September 1868
- Freedmen's Bureau officers order Frank Moss arrested in connection with speeches that were considered too divisive. The charge is later dropped.

July 6, 1869
- Frank Moss defeats George J. Hundley for election to the Senate of Virginia, representing Appomattox and Buckingham counties.